No Faith With Skeptics

In a recent post on her Web site, No Frakking Consensus, she provides excerpts from scientists, ethicists, and activists who excuse or even lionize Peter Gleick for stealing Heartland Institute budget documents, impersonating a Heartland board member, misrepresenting himself to bloggers as an anonymous “Heartland insider,” and palming off as genuine – maybe also authoring — a fake climate strategy document in which Koch supposedly funds Heartland to keep opposing voices out of Forbes magazine, sell doubt as their product, and dissuade teachers from teaching science.

Laframboise comments: “Climate change is a strange beast. When it enters the room, even ethicists lose the ability to think straight.”

At the end of her post, she asks Gleick’s apologists what other unlawful actions they believe would be justified if necessary to advance their cause:

I get it. Lying and stealing and misleading are OK so long as they help advance a good cause. What else is acceptable? Old fashioned burglary? Arson? Car bombs?

Where is the line?

There is no moral equivalence between Gleick’s theft of Heartland’s budget documents and the release of Climate Research Unit (CRU) emails — quite possibly by a whistle blower — that triggered the Climategate scandal.

The CRU is a tax-funded organization; thus, its research and work-related emails are subject to freedom of information laws. Heartland is a privately-funded organization; thus, its planning documents are not subject to such laws. As we know from the Climategate emails, CRU scientists stonewalled FOIA requests for years to prevent independent researchers from checking their data and methods. That was a bona fide scandal, not only because evading FOIA is unlawful, but also because scientists who deny independent researchers the opportunity to reproduce (invalidate) their results attack the very heart of the scientific enterprise.

Leaking the CRU emails was the only way to (a) produce documents responsive to valid FOIA requests, (b) expose CRU’s willful evasion of FOIA, and (c) subject CRU research products to the indispensable scientific test of reproducibility. Gleick’s theft of the Heartland documents served no legal or scientific-integrity objective. The Heartland documents reveal no breach of professional ethics or law, which is why somebody (Gleick?) had to fabricate a ‘confidential climate strategy memo’ to make Heartland look bad.

Nonetheless, warmistas such as DeSmog Blog, which published the purloined Heartland documents, applaud Gleick as a whistle blower, and stubbornly insist the fake strategy memo is genuine, loudly denounced Climategate as the work of an “illegal hack” of emails “stolen” from the CRU server.

The Gleick affair thus brings into sharp focus what has been apparent for some time, namely, the warmist movement is imbued with a ‘one law for me, another for thee‘ mentality. Such a mindset is toxic to democracy and scientific integrity alike.

As DeSmog Blog sees the world, those who espouse Gorthodoxy have a moral right to (1) flout FOIA and the rules of scientific discourse, and (2) violate the legal rights of climate alarm skeptics. DeSmog and its allies fancy themselves cutting-edge defenders of “the science.” In fact, their mentality is thoroughly medieval.

In Europe’s wars of religion, sectarians often tried to justify unconscienable behavior on the grounds that they had no ethical or legal obligations to “heretics” (i.e., anyone who believed differently than they did). John Locke excoriated this pious fraud in his Letter Concerning Toleration:

Another more secret evil, but more dangerous to the commonwealth, is when men arrogate to themselves, and to those of their own sect, some peculiar prerogative covered over with a specious show of deceitful words, but in effect opposite to the civil right of the community. For example: we cannot find any sect that teaches, expressly and openly, that men are not obliged to keep their promise; that princes may be dethroned by those that differ from them in religion; or that the dominion of all things belongs only to themselves. For these things, proposed thus nakedly and plainly, would soon draw on them the eye and hand of the magistrate and awaken all the care of the commonwealth to a watchfulness against the spreading of so dangerous an evil. But, nevertheless, we find those that say the same things in other words. What else do they mean who teach that faith is not to be kept with heretics? Their meaning, forsooth, is that the privilege of breaking faith belongs unto themselves; for they declare all that are not of their communion to be heretics, or at least may declare them so whensoever they think fit [emphasis added].

The pre-modern sectarians who preached ”no faith with heretics” rejected the civil and religious equality essential to a free society. Locke urged magistrates not to tolerate anyone preaching such intolerance.

Thomas Jefferson improved on Locke, arguing that the best way to deal with intolerant sects is to let them discredit themselves in the marketplace of ideas. Jefferson’s Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom concludes by affirming:

. . .that it is time enough for the rightful purposes of civil government, for its officers to interfere when principles break out into overt acts against peace and good order; that truth is great and will prevail if left to herself, that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict, unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate, errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them.

Gleick and his apologists have discredited themselves far more than any Heartland Institute climate science report, climate conference, or global warming curriculum could accomplish.

The idea is painted with environment but the rest of it is just simple old fashion socialism. Envirosocialism.

All , critics, that come in their way to “make the World better” are treated very bad. I first understood that when they attacked Bjorn Lomborg and his book the skeptical environmentalist. Strange that they can do so much bad to make the World better?

Volunteer scientists come to a consensus report about the world climate and how evidence shows that the world will continue warming.

In the mean time, Heartland pays people to continue doubting AGW. Anthony Watts to the tune of 88,000 this in both the supposed fake memo, but also matches up with the files emailed to Gleick. Gleick broke the rules, and may face consequences for it, but at the same time, I am quite pleased with the end result of Heartland being exposed like this.

Renewable Guy, you’ve got things backwards. The IPCC-affiliated scientists you call “volunteers” are paid professionals — paid with our tax dollars. Government funding of science inevitably creates a conflict of interest. Scientists who don’t toe an alarmist line tend not to get funded. Why? Because the grant makers — federal agencies — can’t increase their regulatory power and budgets if researchers conclude global warming is no big deal.

The real volunteers are the researchers who joined Anthony Watts’s Surface Stations Project (http://surfacestations.org/) to survey 1007 out of 1221 stations in the U.S. Historical Climate Network. Up to now, Anthony has paid for the project out of his own pocket. From his Web site (http://surfacestations.org/faqs.htm):

“The project has minimal costs, mostly for this website and computer hosting/bandwidth and that is paid for by the designer of the project, Anthony Watts, out of pocket. No other funding has been needed, sought, or accepted from any entity, corporation, or group. Monetary donations from interested individuals is accepted, but not from any organizations. Donations of time and expertise are however welcome at all levels, especially welcome are volunteers that can conduct site surveys.”

So why does Heartland propose to raise $88,000 for Anthony Watts? So that Watts can perform a public service — create a Web site with new, reliable, easy-to-access surface station data. Quality data that would not exist but for reforms spurred by Watts’s Surface Stations Project. U.S. Government data that citizens today cannot easily access or understand. From Heartland’s 2012 Fund Raising Plan:

“Because of Watts’ past work exposing flaws in the current network of temperature stations (work that The Heartland Institute supported and promoted), the National Aeronautics and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the government agency responsible for maintaining temperature stations in the U.S., has designated a new network of higher-quality temperature stations that meet its citing specifications. Unfortunately, NOAA doesn’t widely publicize data from this new network, and puts raw data in spreadsheets buried on one of its Web sites.”

“Anthony Watts proposes to create a new Web site devoted to accessing the new temperature data from NOAA’s web site and converting them into easy-to-understand graphs that can be easily found and understood by weathermen and the general interested public. Watts has deep expertise in Web site design generally and is well-known and highly regarded by weathermen and meteorologists everywhere. The new site will be promoted heavily at WattsUpwithThat.com.”

In short, what Gleick “exposed” is Heartland’s generous effort to raise funds for another organization so that the latter can make U.S. Government climate information more accessible to the public.

The climate historical approach is the only valid way I see to resolve this mess that the AGW crowd have prostituted themselves to bad science in the search for research $$$. They have had the gall to label us climate skeptics as deniers of the Holocast stripe when we represent over 30,000 verified credential US Scientists (Petition Project) to the US Senate not to commit us to the Kyota Protocols in 2008. Our argument was there wasno empirical evidence that carbon dioxide in our atmosphere had a significient effect on world climates. We are in Interglacial #5 of cyclic 100,000 year duration Ice epochs the past 10,000 years of normal weather. See Dr. S. Fred Singer, “Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1500 Years” He drives a stake through the heart of AGW

The climate historical approach is the only valid way I see to resolve this mess that the AGW crowd have prostituted themselves to bad science in the search for research $$$. They have had the gall to label us climate skeptics as deniers of the Holocast stripe when we represent over 30,000 verified credential US Scientists (Petition Project) to the US Senate not to commit us to the Kyota Protocols in 2008. Our argument was there was no empirical evidence that carbon dioxide in our atmosphere had a significient effect on world climates. See Dr. S. Fred Singer, “Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1500 Years” He drives a stake through the heart of AGW

Your computer wont accept my comments with the stupid message”it looks like you have already said that.” How do you expect anybody to write a scientific comment without laying proper grounds? And you have different readers. I am really getting tired
of your wasting my time. At 95 I have little to spare.
Robert R. Reynolds